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Duas décadas do meu género favorito num só prato. A música intensa e steadycam de rua dos inícios de Carpenter, puxadas para giallo psicadélico em lugares, trabalham aqui com uma dimensão misteriosa de horror escondido ao estilo de moderno The Ring - O Aviso enquanto mantém a lógica do enredo e um comportamento credível dos personagens. O horror é ainda transmitido através das relações sexuais de adolescentes bonitos, conduzidos por uma loura bonita e frágil, e não é um prazer, mas um sofrimento culpado. Acrescente-se a isso os locais sombrios de Detroit sem pessoas. Um deleite para os conhecedores do género, que poderia ter sido o seu acontecimento da década, se a brilhante fusão de direções históricas tivesse sido visionariamente coroada com o traçado duma nova direção. (20/04/2015)

O tema do filme é imaginativo e original (e, ao mesmo tempo, simples). Gosto de como o realizador decidiu não seguir o caminho da carnificina sangrenta ou dos sustos irritantes, e em vez disso fez um filme de terror no sentido tradicional que é assustador por causa da atmosfera e das tomadas em câmara lenta de um personagem que se aproxima. Mas poderia ter sido ainda mais assustador e melhor-feito se tivesse sido pelo menos um pouco inteligente! Os personagens do filme agem como idiotas e as suas tentativas de matar o inimigo são ridículas (o que pretendem alcançar na cena da piscina?) e pergunto-me o que aconteceria se fossem para outro continente. A premissa do filme é excelente e excecionalmente assustadora, mas um horror excecionalmente bom não garante. (08/07/2014)

(49th KVIFF) I’m very happy after the screening at KVIFF. Seeing a good horror movie on a big screen, in a theatre full of people who, considering the circumnstances (the late hour and the booze), behaved well and weren’t a nuisance is not something you see very often. Objectively, I could complain about it being somewhat repetitive, most of the film consists of either how they try to catch the scary spirit or of how they go from one place to another, but these complaints are very well compensated by a premise that is original and entertaining for the genre, the likeable characters (finally, teenage protagonists in a horror movie that aren’t dull chess pieces, but nice young people, and you don’t want anything bad happening to them) and how effective it is overall – the opening sequence already gave me chills, and that feeling repeated itself during the entire 100 minute run. But what’s most valuable is that most of those scenes take place during the day. The climax at the swimming pool and the scene on the beach are some of the moments I will remember at the end of this film year. I was expecting something dirtier given the theme, and more sexually explicit, but It Follows is very lame in this aspect. As the producer said, in some sense it is actually a “pretty” film – the sun shines, the music is nice and the characters love each other. Only that they are followed by a horrifying spirit. (08/07/2014)

A sympathetic horror hipster that works quite well as a "coming of age" story about uncertainty, but worse as a genre piece. The attack attempts by ghosts in make-up are stupid and bring the film down. Although Mitchell has a good sense for visuals, the design (Detroit again) works best when it comes to working with tension and space, but it's not particularly inventive (the scene on the wheelchair is explicitly amateurish). I value the effort to update and the overlap, but the result is only slightly above average. (25/07/2014)

The film follows its inspirations quite flamboyantly, but it's also not afraid to go its own way. Therefore, the only thing that really comes to mind is why the adults in the story are glossed over with such vigor and why we don't know more about the gentleman in the photo - in that case, it would have been a decent crawl at the end and not just a flowing breast-stroke. (14/08/2015)